Canadian family held captive by Taliban-linked group leave Pakistan

A Canadian man and his family have left Pakistan after being freed from a Taliban-linked group that held them hostage for five years, officials in the country said Friday.

Joshua Boyle, his American wife Caitlan Coleman and their three young children were rescued in a raid carried out by Pakistani commandos on Wednesday after the family and their captors crossed the border from Afghanistan.

Pakistani security officials said the family left by plane from Islamabad, but did not say where the family was headed. The BBC was reporting early Friday that the family was headed to London, England.

Boyle and Coleman were kidnapped in Afghanistan in October 2012 while on a backpacking trip. All three of their children were born in captivity.

The release came nearly five years to the day since Boyle and Coleman lost touch with their families while travelling in a mountainous region near the Afghan capital, Kabul.

The couple had set off in the summer 2012 for a journey that took them to Russia, the central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then to Afghanistan. Coleman’s parents last heard from their son-in-law on Oct. 8, 2012, from an internet cafe in what Boyle described as an “unsafe” part of Afghanistan.